On England...

So I thought I might take some time on this blog to do a little explaining about where we are going and why and etc...
I think I will answer some of these questions over the course of the next few blogs and maybe have Michael chime in too :)

So first....
Where are we going???

First off, we aren't actually going to London.  That is what we have gotten a lot of lately.  We are going to the northwest area, which is about 3 hours away from London.  The church that we are going to work alongside is in Culcheth.
Here is a little map to help give you an idea of where:

If you can see the dots for Liverpool and Manchester, imagine us going right in between those 2 dots.  Does that help???

Culcheth is a small village (the whole village being 1 square mile or so), with about 11,000 people living there.  It is a cute village and we loved how you could get to everything by walking.  When there in March, we walked to church, to the kid's school, the grocery store, the pub, and anything else too.

We are looking at moving into Leigh, which is about 3 miles away from Culcheth.  You can get to Leigh via bus or drive, but bus will be our main means of getting around for the most part (or trains when going further away).  Leigh is larger with about 43,000 people living there.

This is the pedestrian street where you find all kinds of shops and such...

When we were there in March checking out Leigh...

95% of the population in Leigh were born in England, so most of the people we will be surrounded by will be from England, whereas if we were in London there would be more of a varied range.  

I found this chart interesting as well:

I will wait until the next post on talking more about why England, and more about what this chart above says about the state of England and where it is headed...

Or maybe I will let Michael talk about that :)